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Trump Likely to Steer Clear of Specifics in Policy Speech to Congress
Trump Says He’s Open to Legal Pathway for Undocumented Immigrants
(35 minutes later)
WASHINGTON — President Trump on Tuesday will deliver a broad policy speech that constitutes his first engagement with Congress, opening a consequential new phase in a presidency that has so far been defined by his unilateral actions and pronouncements.
WASHINGTON — President Trump, signaling a potential major shift in policy, told news anchors on Tuesday that he is open to a broad immigration overhaul that would grant legal status to millions of undocumented immigrants who have not committed serious crimes.
Mr. Trump, appearing in the well of the House, will defend his record of a first, tumultuous 39 days and lay out his priorities for the weeks and months to come. The address to lawmakers is expected to be laden with the populist themes that powered his campaign — but also is expected to be short on specifics.
“The time is right for an immigration bill as long as there is compromise on both sides,” the president told the TV anchors at the White House, according to people present during the discussion. The people requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the private meeting.
The speech marks a potentially important pivot point for a president who has styled himself as the ultimate outsider and made liberal use of presidential power during his early days in office to execute an immigration crackdown and begin slashing federal regulations. It also will reflect the degree to which he now needs the cooperation of Congress to carry out the tax and health care overhauls he has promised.
The idea is a sharp break from the broad crackdown on undocumented immigrants that Mr. Trump has taken in his first weeks in office and the hardline positions embraced by his core supporters that helped sweep him into the White House. The president hinted at the reversal just hours before he was to deliver his first address to Congress, although it was not clear whether he would mention it in his speech.
“All I can do is speak from the heart and say what I want to do,” Mr. Trump said Tuesday morning in an interview with Fox News. He said he would discuss a “really terrific” health care plan his administration would soon unveil. “I’ll be talking about the military,” he said. “I’ll be talking about the border.”
A move toward a comprehensive immigration overhaul would be a dramatic turnaround for the president, whose campaign rallies rang with shouts of “build the wall!” on the Mexican border and who signed an executive order last month directing the deportation of any undocumented immigrant who has committed a crime — whether or not they have been charged — or falsified any document. The standard could apply to virtually any one of the estimated 11 million people in the country illegally.
By this point in his presidency, Barack Obama, Mr. Trump’s predecessor, had established an active — if not always friendly — working relationship with a Democratic-led Congress, having signed into law a $787 billion package of spending and tax cuts intended to stabilize the economy. Mr. Trump has yet to propose major legislation to achieve his goals, with members of his cabinet and senior staff divided over key elements of tax and health care plans and congressional Republicans still split on how to structure them.
The White House did not dispute the report, but Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the deputy press secretary, said she had not witnessed the conversation so was unable to confirm it.
“Health care is a very complex subject,” Mr. Trump conceded in the interview. “If you do this, it affects nine different things. If you do that, it affects 15 different things. I think we have a great plan and I think Congress is absolutely taking a lot of blame but it’s not their fault.”
“The president has been very clear in his process that the immigration system is broken and needs massive reform, and he’s made clear that he’s open to having converations about that moving forward,” Ms. Sanders said. “Right now, his primary focus, as he has made over and over again is border control and security at the border and deporting criminals from our country, and keeping our country safe, and those priorities have not changed.”
Mr. Trump is expected to steer clear of those debates on Tuesday night, speaking mostly in generalities about shared priorities, including pouring substantial new funding into the military, reducing the size of social programs, cutting taxes and regulations, and replacing Mr. Obama’s health care law with a cheaper and more effective alternative. He is not expected to speak at length about his plans for Social Security and Medicare, which he has pledged not to cut, or how he will tackle the nation’s deficit without touching the entitlement programs that are the primary drivers of it.
The president’s remarks about immigration came the day before Mr. Trump was to issue a new version of his executive order banning travel to the United States from seven predominantly Muslim countries and suspending the acceptance of refugees. The ban has been revised because of legal challenges.
Democrats said they expected Mr. Trump to make grandiose promises without laying out specific steps for achieving them, and to double down on steps they argue have harmed Americans since he took office.
“It reminds me of the old joke about two men at a diner,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the top Democrat, said. “One says to the other, ‘Gee, this food is terrible,’ and the other man replies, ‘Yeah, but the portions are small.’”
He argued that Mr. Trump’s address “is far less important than past presidential addresses, because his speeches don’t indicate what he’s actually going to do.”
Still, the speech constitutes a high-profile moment for Mr. Trump. In the past, such gatherings have been the backdrop for dramatic confrontations between presidents and their opponents in Congress. In 2009, Representative Joe Wilson, Republican of South Carolina, interrupted Mr. Obama’s health care speech to a joint congressional session, shouting, “You lie!” Democrats booed President George W. Bush during his 2004 State of the Union address when he called for a renewal of the Patriot Act.
Mr. Trump, though, sees the address as an opportunity to clarify his message to the American public. On Tuesday, the president gave himself an “A” grade for achievements in his early days in office, but a “C” for communicating them.
“Maybe I change that during the speech,” Mr. Trump told Fox.
To write the speech, Mr. Trump turned to the same top advisers who helped develop his inaugural address: Stephen Miller, his senior policy adviser, and Stephen K. Bannon, his chief strategist. The two were still working on the speech late Monday evening, aides said.
Mr. Miller and Mr. Bannon were responsible for shaping the dark themes of the president’s speech on Inauguration Day, setting in place a tone of confrontation with the Washington establishment that the president has embraced during his first month in office.
In that speech, the new president talked about “American carnage” and the “ravages” of economic dislocation. Since then, he has repeatedly warned of the terrorism threats facing the United States and has complained that the country he inherited is “a mess.”
But White House officials said Mr. Trump will offer a more upbeat, positive vision for the country’s future in Tuesday night’s congressional address. They said the president has drawn inspiration for the speech from the frequent “listening sessions” he has held in the White House with health care officials, law enforcement officers, coal miners, union representatives and others.
The result, according to advisers who have seen the speech, is an address focused on two main themes: economic opportunity and protecting the homeland.
Mr. Trump will start by reviewing his brief time in office, recounting for members of Congress and viewers his accomplishments: withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, pressuring corporate chief executives to keep jobs in the United States, and issuing executive orders on border security, regulations and ethics.
Aides said the second half of the speech will be an “optimistic look forward” of the president’s goals: repealing the Affordable Care Act, overhauling the nation’s tax code, repairing infrastructure, securing the border and rebuilding the military.
That mirrors what the same aides said would be an optimistic inaugural speech, but the speech as delivered was a strikingly grim assessment. Mr. Trump has rarely demonstrated a willingness to stick to a script, even during big moments in his campaign or his presidency.
